you pity the wolf with paw in iron jaws
you weep for the bird in wire cage
but who pines for you, rabbit?
your body bound in the formless
vines of sloth, ache, gluttony, sleeps
not in peace, but in catatonia
surfacing once in a great while with
a new hitch, a fresh fester, like a
lake-leached corpse
your mind is a rotting log,
smothered in cobwebs, melting into
the merciless damp
no footing may be found here
no brooding creature would pick this place
to nurse its vital, squeaking young,
the stagnant air would suffocate them all
and your heart--your heart,
that soft and green thing started
from humble acorn
the mighty seedling that hugged
the soil and drank the heat from gracious sun
that embodiment of eternal hope that
reaches always blindly upward
knowing trusting there is space for
it to go and go and go
is wilting
you have choked it with creepers
of doubt and fear and selfishness
you have tugged its trunk into a twisted
remnant of its former promise
who pines for you, rabbit?
who pities you in this prison you made for yourself, lock and all?
slip the vines.
sink the corpse.
tear open the log, rip off the weight
of everything that burdens you, and
what you cannot loose
you must carry
and you must run
and while you may stumble in the mud
struggle over the stream
you will come, breathless and beating,
to a meadow that sleeps under the sky
you will climb the hill with your
burdens light as ticks
you will make home
beneath the growing roots of an oak
and you will be free in your wholeness
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